Holed up inside a NASA C-9 aircraft, Anand “Sunny” Narayanan didn’t notice any strange happenings around him.

That is, until he peered down and saw his feet floating off the floor.

For Narayanan and his cohorts in the Microgravity Research Team at West Virginia University, NASA’s “Weightless Wonder” literally swept them off their feet.

The team, composed of 10 undergraduate students in the College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, ventured to the Johnson Space Center in Houston last month for NASA’s Microgravity University, an annual program that gives college students a shot at designing, flying and evaluating a reduced gravity experiment.

Students tested their experiment aboard the “Weightless Wonder” – offhandedly known as the “Vomit Comet” for its propensity to cause airsickness. The fixed-wing aircraft produces weightlessness 25 seconds at a time by executing a series of about 30 parabolas – a steep climb followed by a free fall – over the Gulf of Mexico.

“You look around and see everyone else floating and things picking up off the ground by themselves,” said Narayanan, a senior double majoring in mechanical engineering and biology. “You don’t feel any different until you see everything floating. It’s amazing – the sensation of microgravity.”

Mark James, an aerospace and mechanical engineering senior from Bruceton Mills, described the feeling as “very calm, like being at the top of a roller coaster for a long time, just without the sudden accelerations.”

The WVU Microgravity Research Team was among 20 selected from universities nationwide to participate in the summer flight program. More than 100 teams applied, and it marked WVU’s ninth invite in 10 years. Teams must first submit proposals to NASA, which chooses participants based on the scientific merit and educational outreach potential of their plan.

WVU’s experiment this year involved an electromagnetically enhanced fluidized bed. A fluidized bed occurs when solid particles are placed under certain conditions that cause them to “boil and swirl.” Essentially, they behave as a fluid, James said.

“The problem with a fluidized bed in zero gravity is that the fluid pushes the particles to the top of the container,” he said. “There’s no gravity force to counteract the flow. The particles pack together and don’t fluidize.”

To correct this problem, the Microgravity Research Team tried to simulate gravity in their experiment by using an electromagnetic field, which pulls the particles down to prevent them from packing together.

“Our hope is that this technology can be applied to enhance filtration or combustion in spacecraft,” James said.

He added that the mixing properties of a fluidized bed could help create “moon dust concrete,” which would promote the building of permanent structures on the moon. The mixing of compounds in microgravity environments can also improve recycling resources in space, Narayanan said, or even benefit coal-to-fuel processes on Earth.

Unfortunately, the particles still clumped together during the experiment. Still, the team’s research lays a foundation for future students who want to conduct similar tests.

The team is currently analyzing its data and preparing a report for NASA.

In addition to Narayanan and James, Microgravity Research Team members include Travis Corwell, of Ridgeley; Marc Gramlich, of Hurricane; Jason Hamilton, of Gerrardstown; Nicholas Mariani, of Charleston; Byron Patterson, of Upper Black Eddy, Pa.; Jeremy Pepper, of Lewisburg; Darius Reynolds, of Baltimore; and Alex Squires, of Martinsburg. John Kuhlman, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor, serves as the team’s advisor.

The Houston trip lasted about 10 days and included a behind-the-scenes tour of Johnson Space Center.

-WVU-

js/07/20/11

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